


One in Purpose

by AstroGirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1542641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are three of them here now: Rumplestiltskin, Bae, and the curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One in Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers up through "A Curious Thing."

He remembers plunging the dagger through his father, and into his own heart. He remembers the sheer _relief_ of it, of finally making the right choice. The choice that should have been his last.

What happened after that, he doesn't know. There was the darkness that should have been his death, and then... nothing. A hole, a gap, a void in his mind. He tries to look into it, but there is nothing there but unrelieved blackness. A blackness in which, for reasons he doesn’t understand, he is certain that something unbearable lurks.

And now he's in a cage. He's in a cage, and he doesn't know how he got here... but he knows he's not alone. For a terrible, terrible moment, he thinks it's his father here with him, pulling one last, unthinkable trick. But the voice he can hear isn't Pan's, nor are the memories stirring inside him. He can feel confusion and fear and love, powerful love, that are not his own, and suddenly he knows. It's not his father. It's so much worse. 

He knows what kind of magic could do this. He knows what the circumstances would have to be for him to use it. He knows, now, what must be lurking in that hole.

"Bae," he says, to himself, to his son. "Oh, _Bae_." _I've failed you once again._ This, surely, is his undoing. This future that he never once saw coming.

_Never mind about me_ , says the voice in his head. (Although underneath it he hears, or feels, or senses: _even for us, this is really, really weird,_ and _fucking magic, I always knew someday it'd eat me alive!_ ) _What about Emma?_ , it says. _What about Henry?_ The feelings that come with that, the worry and loss and longing, blur him together with his son until it's impossible to tell exactly where one of them becomes the other.

Emma. _Emma, Emma, Emma._ He remembers another prison, remembers writing her name over and over, fixing it indelibly in his mind and his magic. He remembers laughing with her in a motel room, thinking he might have finally found the person who could be his home.

And _Henry._ The boy. His son, his grandson, his undoing, his second chance. 

He remembers fraying rope and despair. Gasping and clutching blindly at the bars of their cage, he rips that memory away before Bae can see it, hides it, buries it deep. The action feels familiar, as if he's done it before. As if the ragged hole it leaves inside him isn't new. Frantically, he scrambles to fill it with something better: with the memory of holding Baelfire as a baby, as Bae never had the chance to hold his own son. A poor gift, he thinks, but the only one he has. And he can feel it stirring something in Bae, something that feels painfully like forgiveness. Forgiveness that, try as he might, he has not yet truly earned. Not until he knows that all of his family are safe.

_I'll make it right,_ he says. _I don't know how, but whatever this is, I'll make it right._ It should have been right with his sacrifice, he thinks. They both think. Even in that's he's failed.

_We've got to get out of this cage!_ says his son's voice cutting across his urge to smash and scream and rage, and he realizes with a sudden sense of horror that he hasn't even been able to _think_ about escaping.

**

Zelena comes, and taunts him. _Zelena_. Yet another mistake from his past, returned to haunt him. Perhaps this is the kind of ending that villains deserve, but Bae, of all people, does not deserve to share it with him. 

She mocks him, calls him a coward, tells him that whatever it is he's forgotten, he's _chosen_ to forget. He believes her. He knows her well enough, even now, to recognize the truth on her tongue. But it's unsettling, unsettling on top of everything else that's unsettling. He's never chosen to forget. _Never._ Memories are pain and pain is strength, and what could ever leave him willing to make himself weak? He tucks that away, to think about later. A mystery to solve, even if he isn't entirely sure he wants the answer.

She laughs, and hints at dire plans, and casually threatens everyone he loves. She raises his dagger. Of _course_ she has his dagger. This is a very thorough undoing. 

"You seem surprisingly lucid today," she says. "Perhaps the change of scenery has done you good." She grips the dagger's hilt tighter. He can feel it, like fingers around his heart. "Come here."

The dagger tugs his soul, and his body jerks in response. He can hear it whispering its command to him, but he can also hear...

_Don't do it, Papa! Don't you dare!_ And it's loud. It's _all_ loud. He cries out and puts his hands to his ears, but it doesn't help. The dagger pulls him in one direction, Bae in the other. Again. _Again._ Memory seizes him, the same old memory, but this time there's a wrenching flip, a change of perspective that leaves him sick and trembling, and suddenly he's remembering his legs dangling into an abyss instead, as a hand lets go and his childhood abruptly ends.

"Not a chance, lady," says Neal. Neal, whose soul is clean and free, and no one's to command. 

The two of them stand there doing nothing, nothing at all, until Zelena makes an exasperated noise and leaves.

_Don't let go, son!_ Rumple says, a voice in Neal's head now. _We can..._

But it's too late. Rumple tries to fade away, tries again to make himself nothing, for his son's sake, for his grandson's, for Belle's. But neither of them can hold on very long. Not this time, at least.

Bae is the one fading now, slipping away into the background of Rumple's mind. _No._ Rumple grabs him, holds him tight. _The only way is together_ , he says, and he can feel his son agree. 

There are three of them here now: Rumplestiltskin, Bae, and the curse. And they outnumber it.

**

The dagger calls to him. Every day, every hour, every moment. It calls, and the voice in his head rises up to drown it out. It commands him, and he retreats from it, submerging himself beneath Neal until there is too little of the Dark One left to obey. He makes up rhymes to distract himself, words he can focus on until he forgets to be the one singing them. Until both of them forget. He is full of determination, the determination born of love, but this time it is not his own, and he can trust it to still be there even when his mind is not. 

He feeds the madness, and lets it feed on him. It's a small enough price to pay, to keep his promise.


End file.
